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Published on: April 12, 2019
Interfacial ferromagnetism in LaNiO3/CaMnO3 superlattices
A J Grutter1, H Yang, B J Kirby
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA and Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA and Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials and Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
Abstract:
We observe interfacial ferromagnetism in superlattices of the paramagnetic metal LaNiO3 and the antiferromagnetic insulator CaMnO3. LaNiO3 exhibits a thickness dependent metal-insulator transition and we find the emergence of ferromagnetism to be coincident with the conducting state of LaNiO3. That is, only superlattices in which the LaNiO3 layers are metallic exhibit ferromagnetism. Using several magnetic probes, we have determined that the ferromagnetism arises in a single unit cell of CaMnO3 at the interface. Together these results suggest that ferromagnetism can be attributed to a double exchange interaction among Mn ions mediated by the adjacent itinerant metal.
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